


If you press me to say

by Philipa_Moss



Category: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 10:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13029228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/pseuds/Philipa_Moss
Summary: Omar is sleeping on the sofa again. By choice. He’s a martyr, really, giving up a soft mattress when he’s the one with a head cold.





	If you press me to say

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dsidhe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsidhe/gifts).



Omar is sleeping on the sofa again. By choice. He’s a martyr, really, giving up a soft mattress when he’s the one with a head cold, but Johnny sleeps poorly enough at it is and he can’t throw his back out again. Last time it was a dryer set on top of a washer at a launderette they were thinking of acquiring, and the plonkers hadn’t affixed it properly, so when Johnny went to check the hookups the entire thing nearly crushed him into the ground. He wasn’t crushed, in the end, but he did wrench something and would barely let Omar see to it, let alone go see a doctor. Omar didn’t even really know how bad it was until he walked in on Johnny trying to draw an ice bath, which was mental no matter what was wrong with you. Omar still maintains that the reason Johnny shut the door in his face wasn’t “to have me bath in peace” (and who’d be convinced by that anyway when the water ran brown half the time and the bath had fucking ice in it) but because his eyes were watery from pain and Johnny’s stoic manly act is nothing if not inconsistent.

Omar watches the ceiling, the lights from the cars outside flashing green through the curtains. He tries not to sneeze. He fails. He blows his nose, and drops the tissue onto the mountain next to the sofa. If this goes on much longer, the mountain will engulf the whole room, or the whole flat. Omar deserves some kind of Nobel Peace Prize for sleeping out here in his condition.

Johnny doesn’t give him credit for noticing much, but Omar notices a lot of things. He knows Johnny probably needs glasses, though he’ll never admit it, he’ll just keep squinting or holding carryout menus so far away from his face they may as well be in Fulham. He knows his father has started to forget things, not things like where the keys are because he was never brilliant at remembering things like that even when he did leave the house, but bigger things like the name of the street he first lived on when he and Omar’s mum moved to London. When Omar told Johnny this—when he came home and got drunk because his father had forgotten a street, and then laughed about it later in a jagged burst that lasted far too long and ended in embarrassingly watery fashion—Johnny just frowned and got a glass for himself. Only later did he ask Omar why it mattered, a street name, and Omar found himself reciting the entire address the way his father had his entire life, ending “SW11 1TT” in the same singsong. “London, UK, the world.”

Johnny just stared, but it was a stare Omar knew. It was a stare to give you space, to not presume the starer knew anything. It wasn’t a particularly curious stare, but it could become a listening stare with very little notice.

“You know those stories. Your mother has them. They go the same every time and every time it’s like…” He stopped. He couldn’t put it into words, exactly, the way his father’s face lit with sad joy whenever he recited that stupid address.

“It’s like it’s new,” said Johnny after the silence stretched on for a while. “But like it’s always been new.”

Out in the street there’s some ruckus. The pub closing up, probably. Kicking out stragglers. Omar half wants to go to the window and look down and see what’s what, but he’s not sure he wants to be the kind of neighbor who twitches at curtains. The neighborhood’s already changing. There are white families with prams who cross the street when they see Johnny coming. Omar, they smile at, overcompensating for something their aunties said over mince pie, most likely. Johnny thinks it’s hilarious that they’re still scared of him, because half the time now he just looks like someone’s dad, worn jeans and trainers and shirts to get dirty. The posh families might see something in him, a glint of his past. That’s certainly what Johnny likes to think. He struts around for days after anyone looks at his askance in the zebra crossing. Omar doesn’t remind him that the bleach grew out within the first year, or that they probably just think he’ll swear around their kid or something. Omar catches Johnny in the mirror sometimes, running a hand through his hair (which is still there, dammit, all of it, greying but hanging on and the less said about Omar’s the better) and he’s been threatening to dye it again for almost three years, pierce something too maybe, but he still hasn’t done it. He won’t. He likes talking to Nancy in the shop, asking after her daughter and grandkids. He likes being the guy in the building people go to for help.

Omar is staring at the ceiling, grappling with a sudden surge of emotion, when Johnny pads into the room. He sits down on the floor next to the sofa and rests his head in the space Omar’s curled around. “What time do you call this, then?” he asks. Omar could sand corners with Johnny’s voice this late at night.

“You’re sitting on disease,” says Omar. “The tissues.”

Johnny doesn’t move. “Out here nominating yourself for sainthood, then?”

“We don’t have saints,” Omar says. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come back to bed,” Johnny says. “I’d’ve been long gone if your snotty snuffling bothered me.”

“Liar,” says Omar. “You can’t sleep.”

“Don’t sleep any better when you’re out here,” says Johnny. “The bed’s all wrong. Maybe the frame’s gone wonky. I should have a look at that.”

“Or maybe you miss me,” says Omar.

Johnny gives him a long, considering look. He brings his hand up and smoothes Omar’s hair back. “Maybe I do at that.”

In bed, Johnny tosses and turns. Omar tries to hold his breath but can’t quite manage it. He coughs, and blows his nose. Johnny sighs.

“I’ll go back,” says Omar.

Johnny rolls over and slides an arm around Omar’s middle, pulling him close. “Don’t you dare. Need you here.”

“Neither of us will sleep,” Omar says.

“Neither of us was sleeping anyway,” says Johnny. “Stay.”

So Omar does.

**Author's Note:**

> "If you press me to say why I loved him, I feel that it cannot be expressed except by replying: 'Because it was him: because it was me.'" - Montaigne


End file.
